Polygraphia (book)
Polygraphia is a cryptographic work written by Johannes Trithemius published in 1518 dedicated to the art of steganography.
The full title is Polygraphiae libri sex, Ioannis Trithemii abbatis Peapolitani, quondam Spanheimensis, ad Maximilianum Caesarem .
It is the oldest known source of the popular Witches' Alphabet, used at large by modern traditions of witchcraft.
Review
It is composed of six books and a decryption key.- Book I contains no fewer than 384 alphabets of 24 letters : each letter corresponds to a Latin word in reference to Christian prayers and religious texts, being in total 9,216 different words. This is nowadays known as the Ave Maria cipher, which mostly uses only a few of the first alphabets.
- Book II contains 308 more Latin alphabets with 7,392 words, again using Latin words with mostly religious context.
- Book III presents 132 alphabets in three columns which are 3,168 dictions of a "universal language" where each letter is equivalent to an invented word but capable of expressing numbers.
- Book IV shows 2,880 invented alphabet dictions in 120 alphabets. To decode, one must simply extract the second letter of each word.
- Book V reproduces two canonical hash tables, one direct with 80 alphabets and the other inverted with 98 alphabets, allowing infinite permutations, to which twelve "planispheric wheels" each comprising six categories of 24 numbers combined with the 24 letters and thus allowing a big amount of elaborate ciphered messages.
- Book VI is a collection of ancient alphabets, including Germanic-Franconian, Ethiopian, Norman, Magical and Alchemical.